Console Post of the Week (Mini)
First, to refresh your memory about the October NPD numbers:Wii--803,000
360--371,000
PS3--190,000
PS2--136,000
As Matt Matthews clearly shows here in graph form, the weekly sales rate of the PS3 has stagnated. Rates per week:
August--46,250
September--46,400
October--47,500
As I've written periodically over the last six months, the PS3 is tapped out in terms of growing sales. They'll do substantially better in November and December, because everyone does, but at $399, their baseline demand in non-holiday months is 45,000-50,000 units a week.
That's also (basically) where the 360 was in terms of demand at the $349 ("Premium") price point. Look at the weekly rate of sales (by month):
April--47,000
May--46,750
June--44,000
July--51,250
August--48,750
That's quite similar, so it's instructive to look at what happened to the rate of sales per week after the $50 price cut to $299 on September 7:
September--69,400
October--92,750
In other words, there's plenty of untapped demand for the 360 that's entirely dependent on the price point, and I think it's fair to say that there's also plenty of untapped demand for the PS3 which Sony isn't going to find until they lower the price.
If you begin a generation chasing on price, and you can't sell significantly more units than who you're chasing, it's unlikely that you'll ever catch up. And in this generation, Sony started with a whopping $200 gap to close.
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